Blue Akoyas

Aside from Japan and Vietnam, where in actuality are the blue Akoyas being farmed?
Here in Bkk, iím seeing round strands, and they all say the blue Akoyas are all from Japan.
But does that mean that they are auctioned in Japan, or are the blues actually farmed in Japanese water?

Do any of you, like me, wonder what the harvest run that includes the blue akoya looks like? I've also seen the natural pink and pale gold. What percentage of the harvest is actually blue and what are other colors, white of course, as I can't imagine all are blue. Have the farms been able to color select to produce a higher percentage of blue? Have we discussed this before, lol?

The blue color is a result of injury to the gonad in the process of grafting it, as I understand it. A brownish /black substance produced by the oyster covers the bead and nacre is laid over that. Through the layers of nacre (which is transparent) the color looks blue if the nacre is thick and brown/tan if the nacre is thin.

I don't think the blue color is therefore something one could select for as the injury is unintentional.

I wonder what Jeremy would add to this discussion? So would the process of production of blue South Sea pearls differ from Akoya? Is that color all an accident? Because the nacre is definitely blue on my SS strand. Many of the pearls are more of "gas" pearls and some do have a loose nucleus and are lighter in weight. Fascinating!

I suppose cutting one in half would show where the color is. I wonder if any of my pearl books have a photo of a bluish SSP cut in half? Maybe Bari's book-- he has photos of many halved pearls. Will check.

Pearl Dreams, your thread posting the GIA article on akoya pearl farming in Australia has a lot of correlations to this thread, and info on color development in akoyas! I don't pretend to understand much of it, but it's interesting!!!